A boringly pictureless (catch-up) post

Thanksgiving weekend was a little insane. On Thanksgiving day itself, Bruce and I ran around like crazy people most of the day and I got absolutely no knitting done. Ah well.

The rest of the weekend I spent recovering from Thursday. Friday I knitted some. Started a Koolhaas hat, which is just complex enough to keep me entertained, but is a quick knit. I'm about halfway through. I find myself having to use the cable needle in order to keep track of what I'm doing. Otherwise I would be cabling without a needle.

I'm chugging through Bruce's sweater. As of this morning, I have approximately 15 inches of the 16.5 inch main body done. On to the sleeves this afternoon.

The Featherweight is on hold again. I need to figure out the length of the body for Ella, as well as the sleeves. She wants a longer sweater. I'm not sure I have enough yarn. So I need to do some calculating.

Yesterday, while happily knitting on the Koolhaas, I started to think more and more about designing my own sweaters. I have a hankerin to do so. It will be happening soon. I keep dreaming of some colorwork... I suppose I should complete a colorwork project before I try to design with it.


In non-knitting news

We've kind of accidentally had really nice Sunday dinners a few weeks in a row now, with some guests that have just kinda shown up. We've all really enjoyed the meals, so we decided to officially institute Sunday dinner. Last night I cooked a menu from the new book Martha Stewart's Dinner at Home. We had pork chops with apples and onions (awesome), kohlrabi and fennel slaw, mustard mashed potatoes, and maple custard for dessert. The slaw we liked, but the problem with it is that the dressing completely overwhelmed the delicate flavors of the veggies.

The book is great. It's organized by season, so we can do most of our shopping for each menu from the farmer's market. And the recipes are pretty awesome as well. They're inventive, and unlike quite a few other cookbooks I've found, I don't have to doctor the recipes so that there is flavor.

On Hiatus

I'll be taking a break from ye olde blogge for a few days, at least until after the Thanksgiving holiday is over.

However, when I come back, I shall have my first giveaway! Which, in true Virginia (the person, not the state) will be due to my own crackheadedness.

YAY!

Actual knitting updates

Please, my devoted tens of readers, try not to be overcome with surprise.

Ok, so I dyed the ugly green/yellow/orange koolaid scarf. I meant for it to be this color (or a variation thereof):

(teal jacquard dye from knitpicks)

And instead it came out this color:


Um. That's not teal. I think maybe it's because I used twice as much dye as the instructions called for. Well, maybe it was three times as much. Heh.

However, despite the lack of tealness, I think that the black is a decided improvement over the koolaid colors, and honestly, who doesn't like black? So once I get this sucker blocked and ready to go, I'll package it up and send it off for a Christmas gift.

I just wasn't up for the blocking last night.

And yes, for those who ask, the Knitpicks dye was super easy to use, and they had an excellent tutorial on their website.

An actual photo of the epic knitting fail

Unfortunately, I tried to take pictures at night in our crappy apartment light, so they're not as clear as I'd like them to be.

Although that might be in my favor, because then it's harder to see my incompetence with the knittage:


As you can see, on the left side of the ridgey middle bit, the stitches are all loose and ugly. Bah. I will need to rip back (fortunately haven't knitted all that much) and start over again. Plus the yarn overs on the lower edge aren't working (thank you Shortly for the advice in the comments).

And I hate, loathe and despise the needles I was knitting this on. They were Kollage square needles. Somebody may love them. In fact, if somebody wants them, post in the comments and I'll ship them off to you. I have two or three sizes. International shipping is fine.

My problems with them are:
1. my knitting is loose to begin with, and even though I go down two full needle sizes below what I normally do on regular needles (which is two sizes below the pattern size usually) my knitting still looks loose with these. Apparently they are very good for supertight knitters, which I am not.

2. I HATE THE JOINS on these needles. nuff said.

3. I don't like the cables. Yes, they are very flexible and that is cool, but when I'm knitting with them and the stupid cable gets all twisty on itself and I have to untwist it constantly, that drives me bananas.

4. They cost $16 US, and I have already thrown out a pair of these needles because the finish came off the corners of the squares, making for not very smooth knitting.

Yeah, I'm not really giving a good advertisement for them, but seriously, you may love them. So drop me a line if you're interested.

Epic Knitting Fail

So I started in on the Herbivore and got about four inches into the first part of the project, and discovered that there is something terribly horribly wrong with my technique. Some of the stitches are all loose and nasty on one edge of the ribbing - similar to the problem that I was having with cables oh so long ago (and still haven't resolved to my satisfaction).

Also, the yarn overs (J, it's when you bring your yarn forward between the needles to create an extra stitch and a nice decorative hole. It's one of the ways to make holes in lace) along one edge are laying open nicely, and the yarn overs on the other edge I can barely see when I pull the stitches out as far as I can.

Which is odd, because I certainly wasn't having this issue at all with the Damson. Then again, the Damson body was garter stitch, and this is stockinette.

I am pretty damn sure that I'm doing my yarn overs between a knit and a purl stitch wrong.

Oops.

I'll post some pictures of my screw ups tomorrow when there's better light.


More pictures

Here's some more of Ella's bounteous photo shoot.

This is the Firefly (unblocked) - another Morehouse Farms Original. Again, a super easy pattern, and despite the two skeins of lace weight yarn, knitted up in a few days (2 hours per day).

Pictures (or, Bagheera's photo shoot)

Yesterday was way heavy. I'll write about it some more later on when I have a little distance from it, and maybe some more clarity.

Anyway, to keep the stuff light today, here are some of the results of Ella's photographic bonanza yesterday. She took so many awesome photos, I'm going to have to break it into a few posts.

Today's project is the Sizzler (a Morehouse Farms Original). Very very simple project. But I really dug the brightfreakingpink and it was superfast to knit up.

Here's the photographer herownself:


A couple of lovely shots of the project:



And Bagheera, demonstrating that black looks awesome with hot pink:





And the piece de resistance. This may be my favorite photo of Bagheera ever (although all of these are awesome):

New Photography

Lots of pictures today.

Ella wasn't feeling too hot last night, so she skipped work today (probably for the best that she doesn't push it) and decided to photograph my knitting for me. There are a lot of advantages to having an artist/photographer in the family. That girl can make our little point and shoot sing. There will be actual knitting pictures tomorrow morning. YAY!


Also, I took my lunch break in Battery Park today (that's at the lower tip of Manhattan, overlooking the Statue of Liberty. Tough day at work. Battery Park is one of my happy places. So instead of knitting (was a bit too cold for that, 50F, 10C) I took peectures.

...

You can't quite see it, but that's the Statue of Liberty hiding behind the bush. It's crazy, because if you didn't know where it was, you'd think I was out on some windswept lonely beach somewheres.

The ferry to the Statue of Liberty just coming back:

The rear view (this is immediately behind where I was sitting):



Some of the gorgeous landscaping they've done here:

One last lonely straggling flower:

The only all-glass skyscraper that I ever really loved (hate most of them, but I like this one because it always perfectly reflects the sky) and the East Coast Memorial (WWII):

More awesome landscaping views:

The sculpture that stood between the twin towers (and somehow miraculously survived):

Weekend Fun

On Saturday, Georgia and I went to a Fancy Nancy party at the Borders at Columbus Circle. Unfortunately, our train was running local and we got there for the tail end of the party, but Georgia was happy because the Time Warner Center had its pretty color changing stars hung, and those are her favorite.

Then we walked across the southern edge of Central Park to FAO Schwartz. Central Park was beautiful. Wish you were here, J. (also, Georgia knew already how to get to FAO from Columbus Circle. She's got that part of Manhattan well mapped out in her head.)

On Sunday we went to see the Rockettes. It was an amazing show, and completely over the top. The absolute best part of it was watching Georgia. Her expression when Santa and the little boy started to fly was priceless. And she adored the Rockettes. Bruce and I were completely overwhelmed at the end of the show. Although despite being overwhelmed, we still managed to sneak in quite a few snarky comments. We just can't help ourselves.

Here's the lobby and the theater. Again, taking photos in low light with the camera phone doesn't work all that well.

Knitting

Believe it or not, I got a TON of work done on both Bruce's (Terry's Pullover) and Ella's (Featherweight Cardigan) sweaters. I had to slow down on Bruce's, because I'm not going to be able to move on to the sleeves until the needles I ordered from Knit Picks come in. Again, the pictures of both will be totally boring. Sorry.

I also started on the Herbivore, which in true Virginia fashion, I have now knitted and ripped out the first 20 rows four times. I ripped out and reknitted the first few rows this morning, but I screwed up AGAIN, so I'm going to have to go back and redo. However the yarn is a really pretty color and I'm enjoying knitting with it. Once I get enough of the pattern done so that it doesn't look like a hot mess, I'll post photos.